Famous Deaths of 1992

Ten. Said, ‘doc, I think I have
idiopathic pleurisy. Nothing
gets past these tiny lungs,
they’re infallible filters.’

‘Champion’ Jack Dupree
(or ‘Harelip’ to his friends)
had ten mini fists for fingers.
Stef Sargent was different,

The drain of, not of mortality
but the idea that panic
and prettiness could cease
to be observed (which was

she had syringes for fists
and pumped them ever
slower, slumped under
a shower. Mr Magoo (or at least

a good idea, but not one
I liked) first gaped at me
In 1992. Deathlessness
at the age of ten is this:

the man who made him
blind) died that year
too, reconciled with the family
of the Peter Pan Nazi

Standing over the stream
that fed the reservoir, pulling
down your trousers and smugly
pissing, knowing that the Poles

who paid him in frowns
and in spite. In D.C. Zoo
Ling-Ling’s gigantic black-
eyed kidneys turned to stone

used magic to poach carp
from under the pissy water
for their Christmas dinners.
I didn’t think then that

and panda diplomacy died,
whilst in a Southampton
cemetery Benny Hill’s bones
were moved by bandits

knowledge of death
would involve writing
a poem about the dead
guitarist from 7 Year Bitch.

who found nothing
but the echo of a laugh
that could have been a cough,
and two shrivelled kidneys.